Cool as especially cool cucumbers

So the kids were so astonishingly international jet-set about the whole darned flying thing, I’m surprised they didn’t bust out a couple of LV Monogram Vernis portmanteaus at the check-in counter.

Carry-on luggage marked Saffron & Jasper

For the entire flight to Melbourne and back (cos that’s where we went, briefly), they kicked back and chillaxed. Jasper even pointed out some clouds to me, and, bless him, catnapped for some of the way. Saffron was a bit more of a wiggle worm, as she tends to be, but was still pretty laissez faire about the whole shebang … although she did find throwing maracas down the aisle as we were making our descent tres amusing.

Yes, we took maracas on a plane.

We take maracas everywhere.

The good thing about flying out of Mildura is that the airport is tiny, unlike many airports, such as Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand (for instance).

Mildura Airport, Mildura (tiny)

Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok (very, very big)

And, well, that’s about it, really.

Oh, aside from the fact you get to walk on the tarmac and feel like one of the Beatles circa 1964.

But the especially great thing about flying out of a country town where, by and large, people are a little more relaxed, is when you turn up to the airport 20 minutes before the flight leaves, and even though the flight is marked CLOSED at the counter, a passing Baggage Handler dude (it says so on his reflector vest) processes your ticket with barely a grumble.

He was authorized to do that.

I guess.

And, two minutes later, when you’re sitting in the departure lounge and marvelling at what a close shave it was, good thing we’re in Mildura, eh?, you wave at him driving a buggy past the window before loading all your gear onto the plane.

**

Anyway.

The trip to Melbourne was great. We saw a few chums including our newest chum darling baby Otto (newest offspring of my mate Loon a.k.a. Loony, formerly known as Jason Priestley, formerly known as Mr Chicken), caught up with Tim’s family, toured to Phillip Island to show my British mate Sammi the penguins, bought two pairs of cute shorts (my summer wardrobe done), ate Vietnamese, Japanese, and Greek because we could, and had a few meetings for work and stuff.

My hour-and-a-half-long work meeting ended abruptly when I looked at my watch and said:

“My! I’m really sorry, but my kids are waiting in the car. I have to go now.”

The publisher looked at me mortified, so I clarified:

“I mean, they’re in there with their dad. He would’ve let them out for a bit to walk around the shops and eat and stuff. But I do have to go. Now.”

Mother of the Year award.

Up, up!

Tomorrow, all four of us are boarding a jet plane for the first time.

Yeee!

Honestly, I am trying not to think too much about it, because no matter how much I mentally wrangle this enormously frightful thing of having two toddlers in a plane, it will turn out the way it does. However that will be.

And, unlike the other passengers who will be on that plane tomorrow, at least we know about the toddlers in a plane in advance.

Hee hee hee!

Thank goodness it’s just for an hour and a half …

But for now, vignettes!

**

Yesterday, Jasper splashed about in his little splashy pool chanting “LOVELY! LOVELY! LOVELY! LOVELY!” on a loop of loveliness, except it sounded a bit more like “LUBBLY! LUBBLY! LUBBLY! LUBBLY! LUBBLY!”

Oh, I am so happy to say the twinfants LOVE the world ‘love’.

Every time we say ‘I LOVE YOU!’, they smack their lips

*SMOOCH!*

Immediate cause and effect.

**

Saffron is now my go-to girl. I like to set her tasks.

“Saffron! Where is your hairbrush? Can I brush your hair, please? Where is the brush?”

She’ll trot over to her hairbrush and present it to me. Same with toothbrush.

Today, I mixed it up with:

“Maracas. Where are the maracas? I want to shake the maracas, please.”

She got me the maracas and even gave them a pre-shake, Peter-Allen-goes-to-Rio-style.

The repetitive keyword phrases have me sounding like a bizarre foreign language phrasebook.

Sometimes, however, there is a slight error in communications.

At dinner time, I said (in bizarre foreign language phrasebook mode meets Dr Seuss):

“Saffy, would you like some pear? Where is the pear? Is it there? The pear?”

She pointed at her head quizzically, and then started brushing her hair.

With a cracker biscuit.

The Subterranean of Suburbia (in parts)

PART ONE: THE RAMBLING BIT ABOUT THE TITLE

I once wrote an essay called “The Subterranean of Suburbia” for a cinema studies subject, back in the olden days. Actually, I think there was more to the title. The word ‘auteur’ was probably in it, too.

Regardless, I spent 2500 words talking about it. I remember one of the films was Muriel’s Wedding, and another was Sweetie, directed by Jane Campion.

The best line in the film Sweetie was when the character Sweetie (who was a loony) was nude and up a tree and hurling abuse at her father. I think she was also wearing warpaint.

“You’re an arsehole, daaaaad. Ya f-fin arsehole!” she shouted.

It was me and Tim’s catchphrase for years. And that’s all I can really recall.

But anyway, my title is wrong for this blog entry. It should be The Subterranean of Suburbia. There’s no ‘urb’ for ‘urban’ in Mildura, not really. It’s basically like one big outer suburb, that becomes fruit blocks (vineyards and orchards), that becomes scrubby bush, that becomes the desert.

PART TWO: THE BIT ABOUT US AND THE SPIDERS (NOT FROM MARS)

I hate to say it, but we are so very afraid of nature.

And this is about the closest we’ve got to nature, like real nature, since either of us moved out of home. And we’re scared.

This morning, around 7.30 am, the kids were playing outside before it got too hot. Tim moved the barbecue cover that was languishing, defeated, rumpled on the patio, not at all put to its only task of covering a barbecue, and out of that forlorn barbecue cover leapt a huge hairy black spider.

YEEEEE! screamed Tim.

FWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! screamed I, as I managed to sweep both children up in my arms, Popeye style, and run to the farthest back corner of my yard.

KILL IT! KILL IT! KILL IT! I bellowed.

GET ME A SHOE! GET ME A SHOE! GET ME A SHOE! wailed Tim.

YES! BUT DON’T YOU TAKE YOUR EYES OFF IT! I warned, wide-eyed and shrill, desperately lurching my bemused children back to the house in search of a solid sole.

I never used to mind spiders, and certainly never went around braying for their blood, but now I am fearful. Mostly because of the children. Three weeks ago they were batting around a redback spider on a web like it was a game of swing-ball in our entrance hallway. We got the place fumigated.

If little people playing chicken with a deadly arachnid wasn’t the cause of my new-found loathing, it may well be that I never used to see spiders much in my urban prism, did I?

Much less fumigate them.

PART THREE: THE BIT ABOUT THE SNAKES

When we moved here, people kept yabbering on ominously about snakes in the summer.

Watch our for snakes in the summer, they would yabber, ominously.

They always come in to these parts, where there used to be vineyards.

Especially brown snakes.

And black snakes.

And tiger snakes.

The only type of snake not mentioned were Snakes on a Plane.

So, while I sip my tea on the patio and keep one watchful eye pinned for spiders near barbecues, the other is whirring round for snakes slithering past the Polynesian totem poles we stuck near the compost bin, to scare the mongrels off.

(For the purpose of what I’m writing here, that is. I think we really got them cos they were tiki-kooky, and hunkered in the back, faraway corner of the garden shop. It seemed the garden-shop owner was so grateful we weirdos from the city finally carted away what she’d resigned as dead stock, she gave them to us half price.)

PART FOUR: THE BIT ABOUT THE DEAD CAT THAT WASN’T REALLY A DEAD CAT. PLUS BONUS CUTE BABY PHOTO!

So anyway, this afternoon, we came home in 36-degree heat to have the garage smell like nasty death. The first thing I thought was

Oh Jesus, a cat came in here and DIED.

Just like that. This is how accustomed to nature and the cycle of life I am becoming. I am so blase that I blamed a fictitious dead feline for what was actually our second deep-freezer (the one kept in the garage) switching off sometime in the past fortnight.

We were smelling casserole, deader than usual.

Tim took the hideous spoiled meals out, and hosed it down. Saffron, who decided she didn’t want to sleep this afternoon, had a little birdie bath in one of the plastic drawers.

Birdie bath in the fridge drawer

PART FIVE: THE BIT ABOUT OUR NEIGHBOURS’ ASTROTURF-TAMING

Other bizarre Subterranean of Suburbia fact!

Our front lawn is actually astroturf.

Fake lawn.

Flawn.

Like the kind you find cute little porcelain piggies and lambsies dancing on in butcher’s shops. Remember, this is not by our design, as we’re renting.

However, our next door neighbours regularly water their astroturf.

To get the dirt off it.

I’ve also seen them vacuum it.

TRUE!

School’s in

Oh, listen.

We got a letter today advising us that the kids got into a school in Melbourne. So we kinda know where we’ll be living for a decade or so. This is good news for someone who is about as grounded as an (untethered) zeppelin.

I know, they just turned ONE. We were told to provide birth certificates, lest we be trying to enroll embryos (people do) or our pet budgie (would be fun to try).

One of my friends (unnamed, though she probably wouldn’t care, due to her valiantly rebellious nature) got expelled from that school, and another (Yoyo) says that the person she knows that went there became a drug dealer. Well, they didn’t put THAT person on the alumni!

Tomorrow, when I see Yoyo (who is visiting for my birthday on Monday, hooray!), I will ask:

But were they a GOOD drug dealer, Yoyo? Were they?

Education, it’s such a contentious issue, man. I am an advocate for both government and private, and whatever people choose. I went to a government school and turned out the honoured intellegentsia intelligentsia I AM with boundless degrees (two), and Tim, well, he went to fancy private schools and dropped out of university to play computer games for a living. Actually, I’m not sure who the chump is there.

So in a way, I think it’s all up to the kid and a bunch of other variables. I hope the biggest positive influence in my children’s life will be … well … ME.

Oh yeah, and the guy that got paid to play computer games for a while there.

In other educational news, I am going to Sydney to learn how to make SHOES next year. A master craftsman is teaching me for a couple of weeks in March. This is beyond exciting.

* Yes, I truly spelled ‘intelligentsia’ wrong there, and not for comedic effect. I am such a buffoon.

Toobin’

I have lost my voice! Well, kinda. It’s gone one minute, and then comes back all screechy and unexpected, like Bobcat Goldthwait meets a cockatoo.

Bobcat Goldthwait

A cockatoo

Sometimes I miss all the time I used to spend on You Tube.

I think that montage of Zed sums up the best of all the Police Academy films in a running time of 1 minute 44 seconds. If ONLY they had’ve stuck with 1 minute 44 seconds, we would’ve been spared from the likes of Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow.

I remember seeing Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment at the movies with my mother when I was 9, and considered it a comic sensation. A revelation even. In the way that generations previous saw the Goons and Monty Python.

“MY MOTHER’S NAME WAS JUGHEAD!”

Awesome.

Remember when Steve Guttenberg was in almost every PG-rated comedy your folks would let you borrow at the video shop? And Judge Reinhold?

Man, whatever happened to those guys?

In 25 years, kids from today will be saying that about the dude that played Stiffler.

Back to work

Last week was bonkers, what with my Rocky-esque training schedule (made everything except Friday, when I was ill), and the momentous event of going back to work, the paid stuff.

Oh, I could yabber on about what I’m working on, and the difficult task of tapping out sentences (much less gleaning research) paired with my motherly life (largely refereeing the constant stream of toy disputes that YANK! GRIZZLE! and HOWL! as soon as my fingers hit the keyboard), but the biggest deal really is that the kids have started going to childcare on Thursdays and Fridays. So I can work with focus at least some of the week.

On Wednesday, I took them in for a bit of orientation, to see how they’d find it. Or how I’d find it, really, as I was experiencing a  whole spaghetti-like tangle of emotions at this new phase in our lives.

Guilty (guilty and more guilty).

Worried.

Excited.

Sad.

Partially gleeful at the thought of swapping one lot of work for another.

Did I say guilty?

Saffron tottered over to a bunch of girls for a chinwag, and Jasper launched straight for a pair of young fellas hanging out by a xylophone. Then this song started playing over the sound system that had been pumping out assorted kiddie tunes.

I’m not sure where Jasper’s fondness for old-time advertising jingles came from, but he immediately leaped up, clapped his hands, patted his ears, hooted, shrieked, and danced like a wild man. Or a yeti, even.

The two boys with him stared, agog.

Jasper is a big fan of music, including mobile phone ring tones, and it made my heart sing to realize – if this devil-may-care performance in front of two kids he’d just met was anything to go by – that some day HE’LL be the guy up the front of any gig cutting loose like a loony (appropriately or not).

…

Otherwise, the childcare situation went well enough. The staff seemed very attentive and warm. Both Jasper and Saffron came home with weird little quirks, with assorted play acting I hadn’t really seen before but they’d learned from the other kids. On Friday, we were called a couple of hours in as Jasper had a soaring temperature and we took him to Emergency. Despite his frightening fever, he was happy as a lark. Stripped down to his nappy and singlet, he spent a couple of hours cheerfully squealing at the zombie-fest of fellow outpatients waiting to see a doctor. Again displaying his propensity to party on, dude, whatever the occasion.

Over the weekend, the whole family fell like a house of card to the mystery illness (that I’d sparked on Thursday night, seemingly, but the kids got it worse than I did). Saffy came out in spots that, thank goodness, are neither measles or chickenpox, but a viral rash (whatever that is).

So, their first week at childcare and my first week back at work were highly disrupted, and didn’t go quite to plan. This week’s a wipe-out, with everyone staying home (to not infect the world at large), everything cancelled, and hopefully we’ll all get back on the horse again next week. I think I’m starting to understand – and accept – that that’s how the cookie’s gonna crumble with this kid guff … well … forever.

In training

In the words of Perry Farrell in, oh, a million and one Jane’s Addiction songs:

Awwwwwwwwwww, MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

So, I’m onto the whole personal training thing. Yeah, I’ve been exercising officially since June, like a jaunty walk with a feather in my cap every coupla days on the treadmill at the gym, and I’ve continued to lose weight, but now it’s gotten serious. I’ve got two trainers that ’share’ me over three days, and a whole bunch of classes I’ve committed to, including pump and RPM (spin).  I’ve basically considered the past year, post pregnancy, to be the time where I gently allow my kidneys to drop down from my ears, while I sweetly coax my liver back from my left kneebone to its rightful roost. But now I’ve set myself goals and things, officially, on paper.

And it’s just such a DRAG when I set myself goals, because I always feel like I have to live up to my own word. To myself. I don’t know why I am so darned honourable to my word, to myself, but I just am. (Excludes My Word Meets the Rest of Humanity, largely.)

These are my goals.

3 months (Christmas): Tone up, lose majority of extra kg and fit (properly! no shoehorns, coathangers, greased zippers or muffin tops) into old clothes I used to wear before I treated life as a batter- and chocolate-laden smorgasboard during my pregnancy. Yeah yeah, I was supposed to nourish three of us, but I thought because I felt so horrendously sick all the time, I wouldn’t get all that fat, especially. Sort of the same as back when I lived in London and got the ol’ Heathrow Injection of lard, lard, lard: my Wild Party Lifestyle TM was supposed to counteract all those coronets of chips and three-pack Sainsburys trifles.

It didn’t.

6 months (March): Be an annoying fit person who actually really digs fitness (ie exercise). Trot around with hands on hips and look smug. In short: look stacks better than I did at Christmas.

12 months (September): Possibly be confused for a famous person, on account of looking so astonishingly fit (and subsequently hot)

SO this is my week:

Monday: Trainer 30 mins;  45 mins cardio

Tuesday: RPM (spin) class

Wednesday: Trainer 30 mins; 45 mins cardio

Thursday: RPM class, pump class

Friday: Trainer 30 mins; 45 mins cardio

Saturday: Banana lounge and pina colada.

Sunday: RPM class

Yesterday I attended my first RPM class, and, by the end of it, I felt so victorious, I’d might as well have completed the Tour de France. As I furiously pedalled away dreaming of yellow blousons in the stationary peloton, I got a shout out from the instructor (who also happens to be one of my trainers).

“HOW YOU DOING THERE, SAMONE?” she bellowed over the top of the shit techno, that, after the endorphins started kicking in, started to sound like THE GREATEST MUSIC TO MY EARS THAT EVER WAS.

I shouted back, “AWESOME!” waving and still managing to stay on the bike (my feet were clamped with a strap).

AND IT WAS ALL GREAT.

Because, if nothing else, I like to feel a part of something.

This entry was actually going to be about Brendon: The Mental Case Personal Trainer that I had two years ago. I never wrote about him on my old blog, primarily because I thought he was such a nutter that he might read it and, oh, bludgeon me with a dumb-bell or something. Why did I put up with the nutbag? I’d promised myself that I’d commit to three months of personal training. See preamble about My Word.

Here’s the story in bullet points:

* While I was hurling weights around or running on the treadmill, Brendon would regularly muse that he had overcome a lot of adversity in his life. Claimed he had broken his back three times, and had spent the previous year in hospital, bedridden … sometimes he said he’d broken his back two times. Other times it was only once.

*Claimed to have been born with a muscle-debilitating disease that he was able to overcome thanks to his commitment to exercise.

* As an excuse for being 10 minutes late to a training session, Brendan said:  “I was driving down the freeway, and, would you believe, one of the wheels CAME OFF MY CAR.” Over the course of three months, he used the same excuse twice.

* “Would you believe” was one of his favourite phrases. Usually I didn’t.

* Claimed to have had $25,000 fleeced by his Russian girlfriend … who later became a girl he had met on the internet but never in real life … and eventually, in another re-telling, was not connected to him, but was some bird one of his mates met (and lost $25,000, the chump!)

* Claimed to have an avowed hatred of anabolic steroids. Talked about steroids and how bad they were almost every session.

* Tried to sell Tim anabolic steroids.

* Wore 10,000-year-old Michael Jordan Nike sneakers that were seemingly fossilized originals from 1990 AND smelled like blue cheese. Highly unfortunate when your nose is almost touching them as he counts down your push-ups. Even MORE unfortunate when you can still smell them while you’re dangling from the chin-up bar.

*Months after I finished his training sessions, I ran into Brendon in the street when I realized too late that he was standing in front of me, waving maniacally, and there was no way I could possibly cross the road. He advised he’d just been discharged from hospital after running his car into a wall and flying through the windscreen, much like a human missile.

I made my excuses and didn’t stick around long enough to find out if he had broken his back.

Le end.

DO YOU live in or know something about Sydney??????

SHOUT OUT:

Hi peeps! We’re off on a family holiday/biz trip to Sydney in December to visit mates who will over from England AND to get some respite from the inland fever. Oh, we are so very inland!

Can some fine Sydney people, if you’re out there, please give me a heads up on the best suburb to stay on a holiday … northern or southern beaches. By best I mean somewhere easily accessible, pleasant to venture out in for walks, etc, since for the most part (except the bit where I run away with my friends and go wild for an evening or two) the holiday will be low key and not night-owling and such. If you know of serviced apartments, even better, cos that’s what we need. So Tim’s work is paying, which means deeeeeeluxe is fine by me, Sonny. But otherwise, just an indication of suburb is fine. I  know Manly and Bondi and that’s about it. You might know somewhere else.

Benevolent, benign, and nigh-on beatific regards,

Samone x

Musings and stuff to be excited about

I have to say, one year on (well, a year and a bit now!) and I’m starting to feel entirely like the kids and I have got our groove on together. Yes, that would have to go down as the worst sentence in history. People told me this would happen in less lame terms – after a year you start to feel normal again. Or a new kind of normal. I even start whimsically thinking “Oh, it wouldn’t be so bad to have another baby now. I’d enjoy it with all these skills I’ve got now. They were so lovely when they were young.”

And then I remember, yes, they have always been lovely little people, but, goddamn, two kids at once was TERRIFYING and EXHAUSTING and for most of the past year I felt like I’d been shot out of a CANON or even a CANNON (though, I was so bewildered in the earlier days, I may well have been shot out of a photocopier machine). One baby with two bigger babies would be hard, hard, HARD. If I did the freak hyper-ovulator thing and wound up with twins again, I’d go bonkers. And we’d have to get a freakin’ people mover, and, dammit, while I acknowledge that absolutely nothing about me is cool anymore, it’s taken me a year to get my head around driving a WAGON.

So, no more babies. Ever.

One year in the scheme of two young babies is very different to a few months or even eight, nine, ten months. Saffron and Jasper are quite content to hang out and play together, or alone, they feed themselves half the time (well, sandwiches, cheese and fruit), and gosh, hopefully they’ll soon get their license, those layabouts!

But the upshot is, as they gain more independence, the daily grind of baby care has become less of a grind, replaced by us having so much more fun together. There was no way I could even think about work a few months back, but now I can see there’s some flashes of possibility on the horizon, and I’m cooking up a bit of a scheme with an old colleague, as to how we can eventually start our own publishing biz, of sorts. I may still be very busy with my delightful young toddlers, but this has me very excited.

What else am I excited about?

* I’m also excited that I’m starting with a new personal trainer on Wednesday in an attempt to blast those final 10 kilograms. I’ve got visions of fox-tasticness, let’s see if I ever live up to them.

* I’m excited about the things we’ve got in the country right now (I’m sewing fortnightly with a group of gals led by a wonderful woman who is a pattern maker and a brilliant teacher. And I’m getting electric bass lessons once a week, and slowly getting a bit of rhythm going), but I’m also excited about moving back to the city before the kids go to kindergarten, rejuvenated, and with new skills. I miss my friends and parts of my old life, and just the other opportunities to be had in the city.

* I’m excited about cooking, baking especially. The birthday cake extravaganza got me to deciding I might start baking cakes more often, just for special occasions. If my personal trainer has anything to do with it, I just need to make sure I don’t eat the whole thing. My mother and auntie are having their birthday in October, and I might just do a passionfruit sponge from The Cook’s Companion. I just need to find out if they actually like passionfruit. Because. Um. I do.

* I’m excited about friends coming to visit in the coming months.

* I’m excited about hosting Christmas this year.

* I’m excited about getting this wall-hanging stretched over a frame. God I love Marimekko prints!

Ihmemaa "Wonderland". This thing is massive: 262 cm x 150 cm. I plan on hanging it at the foot of the bed, greeting every morning like a magical mystery tour, man.

Actually, this is how much I love Marimekko prints. Here’s a couple of photos of our house in Melbourne, just before we moved. It looked nothing like this when we actually lived in it. Just insert two tiny tots, Tim and I flaked on the couch like Night of the Living Dead, and stuff strewn, well,  everywhere.

Curtains. Now in spacebags.

And more curtains. Also in spacebags till further notice.

* I’m excited about plantlife. We’ve got a few in pots in our garden, all hardy stuff and a few herbs. It’s simple and relatively drought-proof, which is very necessary here.

* I’m excited about not buying any new clothes. I’ve got loads of old ones that will fit me soon enough, and with my new sewing skills I can just make a bunch more. This isn’t as sanctimonious as it sounds: I think the current fashion is hideous, with all those studs and body-conscious structure, it just looks like armadillos meets Mad Max. I’m far too twee and, well, fat at the moment to wear that sort of thing. I read this word ‘frugalista’ in some magazine which got me to deciding that from now on, if I want something new and fabulouso, I just need to sell off something of equal worth on ebay or something. I like that philosophy.

Le end.

Oh, and I’ve mentioned the word ’skills’ so much, I’m starting to feel like Napoleon Dynamite. For the record, my favourite animal is also the liger.

Two duckies turn one!

On Saturday, Saffron and Jasper turned one year old. We had a little lunchtime party just for the family, and it was splendid. Since the word “DUCK!” is popular with two little people in these parts, Tim and I decided to have a duck-themed party. If the past year of feeding twins, sleep deprivation, and enduring all those nappy changes wasn’t enough of an initiation ceremony, I think the party preparations made me feel like I’d finally earned my stripes as a real mother.

Especially the goddamn cake!

Going quackers! (Well I certainly was during the baking and decorating process when I kept 'sampling' the marshmallows and frighteningly smurf-hued icing.)

Collecting 22 helium balloons required two round trips in the family wagon to the party shop with, oh, 30 minutes to spare before people showed up, and a comical incident in the shopping centre carpark where I thought I had let go of a dozen or so luft balloons by accident. Heart racing, I started shouting “Oh no, no, no, NO!” while scouring the heavens for the breakaway bunch, only to realize they were … er … in my other hand, and floating around BEHIND my head. So, in short, I was going completely bonkers.

Anyway, a lovely day was had by all, and you’ll find more photos over on Flickr.